Links: January 2014

Thursday, 30 January 2014

30th Jan

Follow up on Howard Mark's piece last week in relation to Perkins recent moan for being in the top 1%
The Myth of the “Self Made Man”
{http://pragcap.com/the-myth-of-the-self-made-man}

Talks about people overlaying charts with similar look historical charts to generate attention. Pattern recognition should be used to
Games People Play: That 1929 Analogy
{http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2014/01/29/games-people-play-that-1929-analogy/}~

Cool page ,
Oil Boom: See A Modern-Day Gold Rush In Motion with animation from gifs
{http://www.npr.org/2014/01/29/266757131/welcome-to-oil-country-a-modern-day-gold-rush-in-north-dakota}

Wednesday, 29 January 2014

29th of Jan

With Turkey increasing Interest rates from 7.5 to 12% , it makes you wonder about the tools central banks have, and perhaps we pay them too much attention..
Do High Interest Rates Defend Currencies During Speculative Attacks?
{http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/01/do-high-interest-rates-defend-currencies-during-speculative-attacks.html}

This is clarification on yesterdays article about how we can trust China's growth figures
The Reliability of Chinese GDP, Again
{http://econbrowser.com/archives/2014/01/the-reliability-of-chinese-gdp-again}

Why investors aren't snapping up cheap, battered emerging markets
{http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/michael-santoli/testing-investors--reasons-for-not-buying-cheap-emerging-market-stocks-005355005.html}

An engine better suited for a motorbike.. 400 bhp
Nissan’s Crazy-Powerful New Engine Weighs Just 88 Pounds
{http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/01/nissan-3-cylinder-le-mans/}

Tuesday, 28 January 2014

28th Jan

Japan-China war of words goes ballistic in Davos 'Listening to the raw passion in the voices of Shinzo Abe and Wang Yi over the last 24 hours, I think there is an astonishing level complacency about the world's most dangerous fault-line.'
{http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100026465/japan-china-war-of-words-goes-ballistic-in-davos/}

Buffett’s Fourth Law of Motion: Your Behavior
{http://awealthofcommonsense.com/behavior-investment-strategy/}

Alternatice to Bitcoin, Cash pours into Aussie joke virtual currency 'With respect, this is an unwitting ponzi scheme.'
{http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2014/01/cash-pours-into-aussie-joke-virtual-currency/}

Reading into China's trade numbers
China’s phony exports return
{http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2014/01/chinas-phony-exports-return/}

Contrary to yesterday's article, (Go Small If You Want the Best Returns)
Does the Small-Cap Premium Exist?
{http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=631329}

Dieting has perhaps been covered more in the past than Bitcoin, but this is interesting
{http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2546975/One-twin-gave-sugar-gave-fat-Their-experiment-change-YOUR-life.html}

Monday, 27 January 2014

A lot of press over the weekend covering the top 1% killing the American dream. Tom Perkins asks whether a "progressive Kristallnacht" is coming, with the rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent
Venture Capitalist Compares Liberal Fight Against Gross Inequality To Kristallnacht
{http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/tom-perkins-liberal-war-one-percent-kristallnacht}
&
Then Krugman as a small piece here covering it and boasting his American political history
Paul Krugman: Paranoia of the Plutocrats{http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2014/01/paul-krugman-paranoia-of-the-plutocrats.html}

less contagious than it looks but good breakdown of recent global currency moves
Interpreting Recent Emerging Market Currency Movements
{http://econbrowser.com/archives/2014/01/interpreting-recent-emerging-market-currency-movements}

On the big sell-off in emerging market currencies in The Economist. The broader question is whether these sell-offs are just "little local difficulties" or are a herald of a 1997/1998-style collapse?

The perils of denial

{http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2014/01/emerging-markets}

Don’t Assassinate Your Small Investor Advantage,
Go Small If You Want the Best Returns
{http://www.oldschoolvalue.com/blog/investing-perspective/dont-assassinate-your-small-investor-advantage/}

Friday, 24 January 2014

24th Jan

Heavy reading on shadow banking, another definition..
The Shadow Banking System is an Unstable Funding System for Banks, Not Assets
{http://syntheticassets.wordpress.com/2014/01/23/the-shadow-banking-system-is-an-unstable-funding-system-for-banks-not-assets/}
'The New York Fed monograph is often used to demonstrate how complicated and virtually incomprehensible the shadow banking system is.'

{http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr458_July_2010_version.pdf}
Oh, this is how it works, yo'll need to print a 48" poster to read it.

Don’t believe the hype about behavioral economics , - behavioral economics is over-rated because of her cognitive biases
{http://qz.com/169605/dont-believe-the-hype-about-behavorial-economics/}

An interesting piece trying to establish momentum in stocks. Highlight the flaws in historical trending and how arbitrary it can be by picking particular dates.
"With a 1-in-4 chance of getting a 20%+ return when investing money on any random day it puts in perspective that while 2013 was great it is not as unusual as many think."
{http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2014/01/23/the-truth-about-momentum-and-calendar-year-returns/}

Most Germans don’t buy their homes, they rent. Here’s why
{http://qz.com/167887/germany-has-one-of-the-worlds-lowest-homeownership-rates/}